The Fateful Flight
by Doctor Lennon 007
Summary: The Doctor and Rose are separated from the TARDIS by only one thing: the Atlantic Ocean. How will they get back to the TARDIS? Take a plane, of course. But there's one problem: the Doctor is afraid of flying in planes. I would love to improve this piece, so critical reviews would be appreciated.
1. To the Airport

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. Just thought you might like to know that. Wasn't sure if you were clear on that.**

**OK, now we can go on with the story. Sorry for the bother!**

* * *

Rose woke up groggily. Her bed seemed unusually hard, damp, and rough.

"Where . . . what happened?" she asked as she pulled herself to her feet using a metal support beam.

The Doctor, who had been out cold on the floor, suddenly reared up with no warning, screaming, "Jacket-morning-corner-memory-cartridge-cupboard-o nion-courier!" very fast.

Rose couldn't decide whether to leap back startled or to burst out laughing. She did neither, instead saying, "How long have we been out?"

"Do you think I know?" asked the Doctor. "More importantly, where are we? Who knocked us out? How far are we from the TARDIS?"

Rose shrugged. "Dunno. Seems like we're in some sort of - warehousey thing."

"We'd better get out, then," replied the Doctor. He and Rose walked to the door at the far end of the room. It was locked, but this was no match for the sonic screwdriver, which the Doctor pulled out and sonic-d the door with. A resounding _click_ was heard, and then the Doctor pushed open the doors. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue.

"A padlock? They thought they could keep _me _in here with a _padlock_?" he asked incredulously.

Rose was more concerned with bright red telephone box across the street.

"Erm . . . Doctor?"

"Yeah?"

"We were in New York City last I checked, right?"

"Of course we were, where else would you find a mutant colony of pollution-loving Magoritics living in the East River?"

"Are you sure about that? I mean, the TARDIS didn't get it wrong again, right?"

"You saw the Statue of Liberty, Rose."

"Because that wasn't a car they loaded us into."

"Well, what was it?"

"I don't know, a . . . not-car."

"What're you on about?"

Rose pointed at the telephone box. The Doctor groaned.

"We're in the _UK_? How did they get us all the way to the _UK_?"

"Says the man who took me to the end of the universe in both senses."

"But . . . the TARDIS is in New York City! It's going to take _months _to sail over there, and it's going to be uncomfortable, and they'll have plague-infected rats -"

"This isn't the thirteenth century, last I checked. We'll just take a plane with my mum's money, get the TARDIS, and take her back here with us."

A deadly silence fell upon them for several seconds before the Doctor replied, "I don't fly."

"'Course you do! You fly an alien time-travel machine daily. A plane'd be easier, even if you were planning on driving it yourself, which you're not going to be, I can promise you that."

"But - planes and the TARDIS are _completely_ different! You know what planes are powered by? Highly flammable fuel. The TARDIS is powered by the energy of the universe - not flammable, not dangerous, certainly not an increasing risk factor of an imminent crash!"

"I don't believe this! You, the Doctor, a time lord from the far reaches of the universe, are afraid of flying?"

"No, not of flying! Of flying in ridiculously unstable devices! That would be like asking you to . . . to . . . to cross America on a motor-engine skateboard, or something!"

"That sounds amazing! Has anyone ever done that?"

"You're missing my point! I take it back, a boat would be better!"

"That's ridiculous. A boat would take months, versus just a couple hours for a plane."

"How about we have the TARDIS shipped?"

"You can't drive a moving truck across an ocean, Doctor."

"What about a boat?"

"Months versus hours. If you're too scared to go on a plane, we could ship the TARDIS over on a plane instead of you."

"NO! She is NOT going on a plane! Never! How about we just . . . deal with this diplomatically or something?"

Rose led the still-complaining Doctor away from the warehouse.

As Rose and the Doctor's taxi stopped in front of the airport, their argument still raged.

"Guess what? Six of every seven victims of cardiac arrest on a plane die. Bet you didn't know that. What if I have cardiac arrest, eh? What then?"

"Doctor, you have _two hearts_. If one goes out, the other one will still keep you going until we land."

"There's a reason _why _I have two hearts. I need _both_ of them!"

"Doctor, I'm sure you're not going to have cardiac arrest."

"That's the whole point! It comes suddenly, when you least expect it!"

"Well, keep expecting it and you should be fine."

"Did you know that 18,722 people have died in plane accidents since 1999? We could make that 18,724. How would you like to add two to that number?"

"If you keep complaining, I'm only going to add one, and he'll be gone before the plane even takes off."

"76% of people in an airplane crash die. I really don't think the odds are in our favour, do you?"

"Where are you getting all of these statistics?"

The cab driver had taken all he could of this.

"You owe me £96," he said pointedly.

"Oh yeah, sorry," replied Rose, who hastily paid him and got out, dragging the Doctor with her.


	2. Security

As they approached security, the Doctor pulled his psychic paper out of his wallet so as to be prepared. Rose pulled out her passport. It was pure dumb luck that Mickey had given it back to her ages ago, and that she still had it with her.

The Doctor showed the security guard his psychic paper. She blinked, and then said, "Your parents must have liked _Lord of the Rings,_" with a grin.

The Doctor looked utterly confused for a second, and then smiled back at her as he stepped through the metal detector.

The detector began to blare loudly, as though it was going into overdrive. The security guard motioned for the Doctor to come back, which he did, glaring at Rose.

"Empty your pockets," she said in a bored voice.

"Are you sure you want me to do that?" asked the Doctor. "Because that's going to be a big deal, believe me . . ."

"Empty . . . your . . . pockets," she replied in a slightly menacing voice.

"All right, if you insist," said the Doctor, raising his hands into the air in surrender. He then began to rummage in his pockets. Rose groaned, knowing what was coming.

Half an hour later, two bins were heaped with the Doctor's possessions, including an unfolded umbrella, a stuffed animal kangaroo, a miniature Face of Bo souvenir model, and (most impressively) a life-sized cardboard replica of the TV cowboy Hopalong Cassidy. Now he was just finishing up with shuffling through them, deciding what to keep and what to jettison. Rose had successfully urged him to dump Cassidy, along with a vintage toaster.

"Done!" he announced proudly, looking up from his work. The line behind him had grown substantially, mainly peopled with extremely annoyed people and very excited children.

"You'll need a suitcase for all that," said the security woman hesitantly.

"We don't have a suitcase," replied Rose. "It all fits in his pockets anyway, though."

"Oh, that's grea - I mean, oh no! We're going to have to leave the airport to buy a suitcase!" said the Doctor as he tried to hide his happiness. Rose shot him a glare.

"Well, I suppose it's all right," said the woman. "Step right through."

As the Doctor went through the security detector, it beeped again. Rose made a strange noise halfway between a groan and a laugh as the woman physically pulled the Doctor back through the detector.

"Ah, I thought that might not work . . ." muttered the Doctor as he pulled his sonic screwdriver forlornly out of his pocket.

"What is this?" asked the woman suspiciously, her finger hovering over its buttons.

"Ah, I wouldn't press that if I were you," said the Doctor. "Really, I wouldn't."

Her finger froze over the button. "What is it, Mr. White?" she asked, jabbing the screwdriver toward his chest.

The Doctor mouthed "cardiac arrest" at Rose before replying. She rolled her eyes as he said, "It's a special screwdriver . . . for disabled people."

"Are you disabled, then?" asked the woman disbelievingly.

"Yes, it's a special condition in which I can't rotate my wrist properly to turn a proper screwdriver," said the Doctor with a smile.

The woman paused, as if making an internal decision for this unconventional situation. She seemed to resolve herself before saying, "You'll have to check that."

The Doctor froze. "What?"

"You'll have to check it. It can't come onto the plane unless it's in a checked bag."

Wordlessly, the Doctor turned abruptly and stalked away toward the baggage check. Rose glanced between him and the security woman.

"Erm . . . can you hold on to this until he gets back? Sorry . . . ." she said, thrusting the buckets of the Doctor's possessions at the security woman before hurrying off after the Doctor.

The Doctor deftly ducked under the ropes defining the line at which people were waiting to check baggage. This placed him at the front of the line. Rose sighed, exasperated, before ducking after him.

"I'll be checking . . . I'll just be leaving . . . I'll be entrusting unto you . . ." stammered the Doctor, before breaking off and jamming the screwdriver into Rose's hands.

"What do you expect me to do, try to smuggle it in like you did?" she asked irritably.

"Just do it. Give it to them. I can't do it," replied the Doctor shortly, pointedly looking the other direction. Rose rolled her eyes and handed the sonic screwdriver to the confused worker.

"Uh, no, we can't check this without a bag for it. Sorry, ma'am," said the worker.

The Doctor turned around furiously, opened his mouth as if to say something, changed his mind, and speed-walked furiously to the baskets where example luggage was shown, as an example of what would fit into overhead compartments. He furiously yanked the large suitcase out of the plastic basket and ripped the plastic stating the dimensions from the front of it. He stalked back to the counter and threw the suitcase onto the desk.

The worker stared wide-eyed.

Rose stuffed the small sonic screwdriver into the clunky, large suitcase before racing off after the Doctor.


	3. The Gate

As they approached security, Rose and the Doctor again pulled out their identification. They sent the Doctor's pocket litter through the x-ray machine, and Rose preceded the Doctor through the metal detector. This time, the Doctor didn't set it off, but upon reaching the other side, he was promptly called aside by security to be frisked. The security man began to pat him down.

The Doctor looked exasperatedly at Rose.

The man's hands paused for a second when they rested on opposite sides of the Doctor's chest. The Doctor mouthed "cardiac arrest" at Rose again as the man paused, frowning for a second. He dismissed whatever he was thinking about two pulses a second later, though, and was forced to let the Doctor enter the airport.

"How about I take this escalator and you don't, and we race?" asked Rose as they reached the first escalator, mainly to cheer up the Doctor, who had been walking along gloomily and taciturnly since the events at security.

"All right, fine," said the Doctor. Rose stepped onto the up escalator.

The Doctor glanced at the staircase next to the escalators, promptly rejected it, and instead began to leap up the down escalator three steps at a time, nearly knocking several harmless citizens over. Rose burst out laughing as the Doctor's coat flapped behind him. She was still going faster than the Doctor, even though she wasn't even walking up her escalator.

As the two of them stepped off the escalators, the Doctor several seconds behind Rose, the Doctor proclaimed, "I won!"

"No, you didn't!" exclaimed Rose. "I won, it was obvious!"

"Ah, but you didn't say we were _time_ racing, did you?" said the Doctor smugly. "I say it was a race to see who could sweat the most," he continued as he wiped his damp brow with the back of his hand.

"A physical exertion race?" asked Rose incredulously. "No one does that!"

"We just did."

Rose groaned.

"Look at this!" said the Doctor excitedly. "A horizontal escalator!"

He was pointing at the people-mover in the large airport hallway.

"Can we go on it?" he asked.

"Sure," said Rose, happy with his improved mood. At least, until he promptly sat down on the moving handrail, his long trench coat draped over the opposite side of the rail.

"What? No! Get down, you're not supposed to ride on the handrail!"

The Doctor ignored her. Rebellion seemed to be his new policy. A little girl was staring at him, and he waved jauntily at her as the handrail carried him slowly past the gate at which she was sitting.

When they reached the end of the people mover, the Doctor leapt deftly down from his perch. Rose steered him away from the next people mover and into a random tchotchke shop.

"What are you trying to do, get us arrested?" she hissed at him as she dragged him into the shop.

"Exactly!" exclaimed the Doctor, beaming. "That way, we won't have to take a plane!"

"I am never doing this with you again."

"Ah, I was hoping you'd say that!"

The Doctor paused to look at some tchotchkes while Rose searched for some crisps to snack on. When she returned to the Doctor with a couple of baggies, he was staring at a perpetual motion machine.

"Oh, I should examine this with my sonic screwdriver," said the Doctor pointedly. He dug through his pocket in a horribly exaggerated manner, before moaning, "Oh no! That's right, they made me _check it_!"

"Are you going to be this annoying the whole flight?"

"Yep."

As Rose and the Doctor sat down in the black plastic seats in front of their gate, the Doctor plopped down and began to stare at the ceiling, twiddling his thumbs. Rose opened her bag of crisps and offered the other one to the Doctor. He ignored her, still staring at the nondescript white ceiling. Not quite sure what to do with the crisps, Rose tentatively put them on the Doctor's chest. He didn't move a muscle.

Rose eventually got up to buy a newspaper or cheap paperback to read. When she got back, the Doctor was exactly as she had left him. The crisps had slowly slid into his lap.

"What're you doing, then?" she asked him.

"I'm finding the slope of an undefined line," he replied.

"That's not possible. That's the whole point, it's _undefined_."

"M-hmm."

About half an hour later, the Doctor leapt up excitedly.

"That's it, Rose! Thank you, that's brilliant!"

"What did I do?"

"Nothing!"

"Oh, okay. Er . . . the flight's going to leave in twenty minutes. Want to use the bathroom before we leave?"

The Doctor hugged her wordlessly before walking away.

Twenty minutes later, the call for boarding sounded over the intercom.

"No way is he taking that long to use the bathroom," muttered Rose suspiciously. She got up and walked over to the bathrooms.

"Uh, Doctor?" she called hesitantly into the door of the mens' restroom. No response. "You in there?"

She'd seen him go in. There was only one option. Rose squared her shoulders and stepped into the mens' room.

Thankfully, no one was using the urinals or washing their hands. Only one toilet stall - the wheelchair stall - was occupied. Grunting was coming from inside.

"Doctor?" called Rose hesitantly, knocking on the door. The grunting stopped suddenly. _It's definitely the Doctor_, thought Rose. _He's trying to avoid me._

She peered under the stall door, and saw the Doctor's feet, along with a strange contraption made of a plastic knife, some sort of alien glue, a rubber band, a picture frame, nail polish, a broken vinyl record, and what looked like a can of hairspray. The plastic knife had somehow been strengthened by this pocket litter, because it was imbedded in the tile floor.

"You're trying to dig your way out?!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Right, get out of there. NOW."

"We do not surrender!"

"The plane is boarding, and here I am in a men's restroom arguing with a man who uses alien pocket litter to escape the airport."

"Wow, it's boarding already? I won't have to dig out this way! I can just miss the plane!"

"GET OUT!" Rose yelled as she yanked the door to the toilet stall so hard that the hinges popped off. She yanked the door open, to reveal an utterly unabashed Doctor, bent intently over his work, wearing vintage science goggles over his glasses.

Much to the shock of many of the airport's occupants, Rose emerged a minute later dragging the Doctor out. His plastic knife contraption was imbedded in the floor, digging a tiny trench behind them.

Once they were outside the bathroom, Rose pried the Doctor's hand from his device and then stomped down on the contraption. It broke under her heel.

The Doctor seemed to finally admit defeat. His shoulders hunched over and he morosely pulled off his safety goggles and pocketed them. He followed Rose to the boarding line. Even though they were last, they still reached the passport examiner very quickly.

She glanced at their boarding passes and passports, comparing the names on the passes to the names on their passports.

"Rose Tyler . . . Rose Tyler. Doctor White . . . I'm assuming that your first name is Doctor like it is on the boarding pass, right?"

"Yep. Why?"

"Because your passport must be flawed. It says 'Gandalf' White."

"Oh yeah! That's . . . my middle name. The passport people got it wrong, I know."

The woman shrugged. "All right, you can board."

The Doctor looked crestfallen. "Sure you don't want to pull me aside?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Now get on the plane."


	4. Plane I

Rose and the Doctor proceeded along the tunnel leading to the plane.

"I just want you to know, Rose, if I die and you don't, you are most certainly _not_ getting the TARDIS, or anything else of mine," said the Doctor conversationally.

"Doctor, it's not that bad! You act like we're stepping into a death trap or something."

"We are," replied the Doctor as he and his companion stepped into the plane itself. The Doctor began to turn left, toward first class, but Rose dragged him to the right.

"Where were you going?" she asked.

"Our seats," he replied.

"We're not sitting over there, silly! That's where they serve you proper food and the seats go all the way back!" Rose giggled.

"And ours don't? Wait, if we don't get real food, what do we get?"

"A cheaper flight."

The twosome approached their seats.

"11 . . . 12 . . . 13, here we are," said Rose, watching the numbers above the seat rows.

"You expect me to ride in this death trap in row thirteen?" asked the Doctor incredulously.

"Oh, come on, you don't go for that sort of stuff normally."

"This isn't normal."

"All right, fine. Do you want to sit in the window seat or the middle?"

"Well, I would sit in the middle, so that I can get out into the aisle sooner if anything happens, but then again, I might need to watch what's going on outside the plane to identify the cause of trouble, in which case I should sit in the window seat. Of course, I'd be of no help regardless without my _sonic screwdriver_, but still, maybe I'd better-"

"Just sit down, Doctor!" exclaimed Rose, pushing him into the window seat. He sat there moodily, staring out the window at the tarmac. Just as Rose was preparing to sit down next to him, a man tapped her on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, but could you give me a hand with this?" he asked her, gesturing to his monolithic wheeled suitcase. "I need to get it into the overhead . . . ."

"Erm, sure, I guess," said Rose, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She tentatively began to help the man lift the incredibly heavy case. She took most of the weight of the case as they hoisted it into the overhead compartment, muscles straining.

"Thanks," said the man to Rose.

Before she could reply, the Doctor said loudly, "Wonder how many people he had to bribe before they let that huge thing on, eh, Rose? Strange that they didn't make him check it-"

Before the Doctor could make any obnoxious remark about his screwdriver, Rose quickly sat down next to him, calling, "No problem!" over her shoulder to the man. He sat down in the aisle seat in the row in front of theirs.

"Shut up," hissed Rose in the Doctor's face.

"Get out of my face, it's stressful!" whined the Doctor.

"Make me," said Rose ferociously, nearing the breaking point.

"Cardiac arrest," muttered the Doctor murderously. Rose decided to pointedly ignore him.

As they sat there, a very corpulent man made his way down the aisle, and sat down in the aisle seat next to Rose, just as the woman in front of her reclined her seat as far as was possible in economy class. Rose, squished in her seat, glanced at the Doctor as the man sitting next to her won the battle over the armrest. The Doctor smiled smugly at her before turning back to the window.

That was when the baby right behind him began to cry loudly. It was Rose's turn to smile smugly.

As they sat in these uncomfortable positions, the flight attendants emerged, announcing that they would go over safety directions before the plane took off. The Doctor obediently removed the safety directions from the flap in the seat in front of his.

"It's kind of like a marsupial chair, isn't it?" he said conversationally to Rose.

"What're you doing, then?" she asked.

"Reading the safety directions, so I know what to do in the event of the worst."

"But nobody ever actually reads those!"

"Turn off your phone, Rose."

"Oh, come off it, nobody does that."

"The flight attendants are telling us to. Now, if you can't trust the people running the plane to tell you what to do, how can you possibly feel safe?"

"Doctor, that's a ridiculous argument, and you know it."

"Turn off your phone!"

Rose sighed and turned on the phone, as the intercom announced that the plane was about to take off.


	5. Plane II

As the plane soared off the tarmac, the fat man sitting next to Rose began to snore loudly. His head sank slowly toward her shoulder as she leaned away.

The Doctor's adrenaline levels were so high that his legs were shaking uncontrollably. He looked away from the window to avoid watching the ground receding behind them.

"We're still on the ground. We're still on the ground," he muttered to himself.

"No, we're not," said the woman sitting in front of Rose, looking pleasantly back at the Doctor through the two inch gap between her seat and the seat next to her. It had been caused by her excessively reclining chair.

"No," interjected the Doctor. He paused, and then said, "Well . . . I would be able to tell if someone hadn't confiscated-"

Rose elbowed the Doctor in the ribs with her left arm while using her right to carefully move the fat man's head back into his own seat.

"Isn't that lovely?" said the woman happily. "I'm Edna Murphy, by the way," she added pleasantly, extending her arm awkwardly over the back of the seat. The Doctor tentatively shook her hand.

Her hand relinquished its grip on his and flew back into her own row as she asked, "What's your name?"

"I'm the Doctor," said the Doctor.

"Doctor who?" she asked.

"Doctor White," interjected Rose, remembering the Doctor's unusual alibi.

"I'm from Chicago," said the woman. "I was in London visiting my niece, who just got married to a lovely young man from - well, officially I was there on this corporate trip, but job work is boring - not that my job is boring, I'm an international accountant. It's a fantastic job, I think you'd love it. I get to fly around all the time and do such interesting things - although not nearly as interesting as the stuff people like famous historical figures did. I'm really interested in Perenelle Flamel at the moment, she's just fascinating. I'm reading this fantastic book about her - and her husband of course, that alchemist. Alchemy is incredible, don't you think? Anyway, this book is fantastic, it really seems like your type of book."

"Mmm," said the Doctor, pulling his personal TV remote from his armrest.

"Where are you from?"

The Doctor put in earbuds, which he then connected to his personal TV. The woman turned around again, dissatisfied, and proceeded to try to converse with one of her other neighbours. This, combined with the baby screeching in row 14 and the fat man's snores, made Rose want to scream. Instead, she pulled out her cheap paperback and tried to read.

Five minutes later, the Doctor, now wearing his glasses, muttered something unpleasant in Raxacoricofallapatorian.

"What's wrong?" asked Rose, the only person who knew what the Doctor had just said.

"Too slow," muttered the Doctor, who was impatiently tapping on his remote. Rose leaned over to see what he was doing on his personal TV

"Top Secret: CIA," Rose read aloud. "What are you up to?"

"Figuring out which flights today are suspected for terrorist bombings," muttered the Doctor.

"If you keep worrying about this sort of safety stuff, you're going to have cardiac arrest," joked Rose.

"Cardiac arrest?!" exclaimed the man with the big suitcase from row 12.

"Who's going into cardiac arrest?" asked the chatty woman.

The fat man snorted in his sleep and adjusted his position a little.

"Oh my god! I am?" asked the Doctor, horrified, pulling out his earbuds. Rose groaned, letting her head fall back onto her headrest.

After another five minutes, the Doctor (having by now realized that he was not a victim of cardiac arrest) flipped over his remote, exasperated.

"Rose?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you have a key?"

"Yeah, sure," she replied as she dug through her pockets. "Here it is. The key to my mum's flat. Why?"

"Because I have to get this screw out, but I haven't got my-"

"Yes, I know! But why are you dismembering a remote?"

The Doctor quickly unscrewed the battery panel. "I figure if I just push this in a little further, I can give it the boost of power it needs to work faster," he explained. He pushed the remote's innards in.

Every TV screen on the plane went black. Shocked silence hung over the plane for a second. Even the chatty woman, snoring fat man, and baby had grown strangely silent. Then everyone began to talk at once.

Flight attendants came into the cabin, announcing redundantly that the TVs had gone down due to an oversurge of power.

"Well, it did give it the extra power," muttered the Doctor to Rose, the latter of whom was already face-palming.

Another five minutes came and went before the captain came onto the intercom.

"I'm sorry, but we have some minor turbulence ahead. The fasten seatbelt signs are coming on," they did, "and I'm going to ask you to remain seated."

"Turbulence?" said the Doctor frantically. "Turbulence is bad. We might crash!"

"We're not going to crash, Doctor. This happens all the time."

"You can't know that! I'm going to be prepared when it happens."

The Doctor had absorbed his safety information well. He yanked the life jacket out from under the seat in front of him with one hand while he pulled down the oxygen mask from above with the other hand.

An alarm began to blare, and all the lights on the plane went out, except for little emergency guiding strips of light along the aisle. People began to scream.

"Please stay in your seats!" yelped the captain over the intercom. "This is not an emergency! Remain calm!" This had pretty much no effect. Even the fat man woke up, groggy and disoriented. The baby, who had been quiet since the Doctor had crashed the TVs, woke up again and began to sob uncontrollably.

"Please, get up, sir," said a burly male flight attendant to the fat man. The fat man stood up and got out of his way.

"Would you mind getting out of my way, ma'am?" he asked Rose menacingly.

"Yes, I would mind!" she replied. The Doctor watched the scene from behind his oxygen mask as he tightened his life jacket.

"Are you with him?" asked the flight attendant, gesturing with disgust toward the Doctor.

"Yeah, I am! And to get through to him you'll have to go through me!"

"I will if you don't move."

"He'll come calmly, won't you, _Doctor?_"

The Doctor shook his head petulantly.

That pushed Rose over the edge. She tore off the Doctor's mask and yanked him into the aisle by the straps of his life jacket.

"Where do you want me to take him?" she asked the flight attendant.

"We have two open seats at the front of economy class. They're excellent for observation."

Rose began to drag the Doctor toward the front of the plane, but then paused.

"Two?"

"One for you and one for the other troublemaker."

The Doctor began to laugh. "See, Rose? You're a troublemaker too!"

The flight attendant led both Rose and the Doctor to the front of the plane, as the rest of the passengers watched, aghast.


	6. Plane III

Rose and the Doctor sat down at the front of the plane. Rose noticed that these seats didn't have personal TV screens (not that this mattered considering the Doctor's previous antics). As the normal lights came on in the plane, the Doctor pulled his legs into a cross-legged meditation pose.

A flight attendant came around with a cart of food and beverages. Rose thought of Stoffur's with horror, but the flight crew seemed to be shunning them and never asked if they wanted anything. Rose glanced over at the Doctor, only to find that he had fallen asleep, his chin touching his chest.

As the food cart came back up the aisle, a man was walking behind it. Rose assumed he was going to the bathroom - at least until he sat down next to her and held out a formerly frozen "meal" to her.

"The best that money can buy three thousand miles from the surface of the earth," he said with a grin. Rose thought about pointing out that they had real food in first class but decided against it.

"Say, does your boyfriend want anything?" he asked, gesturing toward the Doctor.

"Oh, erm . . . he's not my boyfriend," said Rose.

"Okay . . ." said the man. "Where is your boyfriend, then?"

"I don't really have a boyfriend anymore," said Rose, thinking of Mickey trapped in a parallel universe.

"Oh, okay," replied the man. "That's good."

He sat down next to Rose.

"So, where are you from?"

"London. How about you?"

"I'm from the finest city in the U.S. of A: Dallas, Texas."

Rose nodded sagaciously by way of reply. The man began to tell her about the wonders of Texas and how amazing its inhabitants were. After quite a while of this, the flight attendants came on the intercom and announced that the flight would be landing shortly. Rose had spent almost the entire eight-hour flight listening to him.

He suddenly asked, "So, can I have your number?"

Rose wasn't really paying too much attention at this point.

"Sorry, what?"

"I just want to be able to send for you when I have enough money to get you to Dallas to be with me!"

"Hang on, do you think I'm going to be your girlfriend or something?"

"I thought you already were!"

Rose elbowed the Doctor with her left arm, muttering, "Could use some help here . . . ."

The Doctor continued to sleep peacefully, blissfully unaware of Rose's awkward predicament.

Rose groaned inwardly as the man leaned closer and said, "Unless you wanna come now."

"Er . . . no thanks."

"Come on, you know you want to! We could drive around in my SUV all you want!"

"Listen, this guy might not be my boyfriend, but he's the Doctor," said Rose angrily, gesturing at the Doctor. "He might not look like much now, but if I wake him up, he could send you flying into the depths of prehistory. So I would advise you to get up and back away calmly. He can be very jealous; you have been warned."

The man looked at the Doctor disbelievingly. "That guy? He looks about as harmless as a plastic knife."

"Well, he's been know to cause a terrible heart condition before," said Rose loudly, seriously hoping that this would work and wake the Doctor up. "It's called _cardiac arrest_."

The Doctor yelped and his legs shot down to a normal sitting position. His eyes widened in fear, and then closed as he began to spasm. The Texan got up, even though the fasten seatbelt sign was on, and retreated to his normal seat as the plane began to go into a sharp dive down to the tarmac below.

Rose frantically grabbed the only thing handy - the Stoffur's meal - and whacked it on the Doctor's chest. She'd read something somewhere about stimulating the heartbeat. This had basically no effect.

"He's going into cardiac arrest! Someone help!" exclaimed Rose, but no one believed them after the Doctor's earlier tricks.

Suddenly, the Doctor's body grew strangely calm, and he exhaled deeply.

_Oh no_, thought Rose. _If he regenerates on a plane I'm going to kill him_.

Suddenly, the Doctor's eyes flew open.

"How was the flight?" he asked calmly as the plane touched down.

Rose gaped.

"You just went into cardiac arrest!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, I recover quite easily from cardiac arrest," replied the Doctor complacently. "All I need is a good, hard whack."

"On your chest?" asked Rose.

"Oh, anywhere really," replied the Doctor.

The fasten seatbelt sign dinged off, and people began to stand up. The first person out of her seat was the chatty woman, who hurried over to the Doctor and Rose. She was clutching a thick, dustjacketed, hardcover book.

"Like I said earlier, you just have to read this!" she persevered valiantly, but the Doctor cut her off.

"Perenelle Flamel was a dull hypochondriac. She thought she had the plague. Now, if you'll excuse me, my friend and I have some _very _important business to attend to," he said scathingly. He led Rose off the plane by her elbow. They were the first into the tunnel out of the plane, and as soon as he had made his dramatic exit final, the Doctor let go of Rose and ran at breakneck speed up the tunnel and out of the plane. Rose rolled her eyes and raced off after him.


	7. From the Airport

As they exited the tunnel and entered the boarding lounge, the Doctor and Rose looked at each other.

"We both know where we're going now, right?" asked Rose.

"Definitely!" said the Doctor with a sigh of relief.

They walked to the main hallway of the airport and glanced up at directional signs. They turned in opposite directions, began to walk, and then wheeled around to see where the other was going.

"Oi, where are you going?" asked the Doctor angrily.

"I could ask you the same!" retorted Rose.

"_I _am going to fetch my sonic screwdriver," replied the Doctor haughtily. "I don't know where _you_'re going."

"Oh, right," said Rose. "Sorry, I forgot. I just wanted to get out of here as fast as possible."

"You forgot about the sonic?" asked the Doctor incredulously.

"I- It's not like- Never mind," said Rose. The Doctor turned back in the direction of baggage claim as Rose followed him.

When they finally got to the slowly rotating conveyor belt, luggage was just beginning to emerge from the opening. They paused about ten yards from the baggage claim.

"So, you know what the suitcase looks like, right?" Rose asked the Doctor assuredly.

His head abruptly turned in her direction. "I thought you did."

"No idea, sorry. Anyway, you're the one who ripped it out of a modeling display back at Heathrow."

Conflicting emotions flew across the Doctor's face.

"But . . . how will I know which one my sonic is in?" he asked pitifully.

"Well, the paint'll be all ripped off one side," replied Rose reasonably.

"What if it's the other side?" asked the Doctor forlornly.

"It's not," said Rose confidently.

"How do you know?" asked the Doctor, turning to look at her.

"Because it's right there," replied Rose, smiling and pointing.

The Doctor's head whipped around, and his eyes locked on the case. After locating it, he raced toward the conveyor belt, and as the suitcase followed the revolution of the belt around to the other side of the bump in the middle of the oval-shaped baggage claim, the Doctor leapt atop the conveyor belt, and ran along it. He snatched the suitcase as soon as he reached it, and he fumbled for the clasps as the conveyor belt continued to carry him around with the baggage. As he turned back into Rose's view, he was yanking the sonic screwdriver out of the suitcase. He kissed the screwdriver before carefully pocketing it, and he threw the suitcase over his shoulder without a backward glance. It landed on top of a neighbouring baggage claim.

A security guard yelled something and began to run toward the Doctor's conveyor belt, spurring the Time Lord into action. He ran to the end of the baggage check closest the exit door, leapt off, and raced through the glass door to the road where the welcoming New York cabs were waiting. Rose was hot on his heels as the automatic glass doors slid smoothly shut behind them. The Doctor pulled out his newly recovered sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the doors, sealing them and separating him for once and for all from not just their pursuing police officers, but the entity of "airport" entirely.


End file.
